the wound is where the light enters you
by Sorry I Just Did
Summary: "they say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?" - rumi a moment of respite set some point during EoD when Raffe, Penryn and Paige are stopping for the night at a house, and penryn and raffe are honest for moment


**Disclaimer:** i own nothing.

title & summary quote are from rumi

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_"they say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?" - rumi_

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Penryn tosses around for what seems like the tenth time in the last hour. The silken sheets feel too soft against her bare legs, and the goosebumps ablaze on her skin haven't been able to die down since she got in bed. She doesn't know if it's the shorts or the adrenaline and endorphins running out from her reunion with Raffe but she just can't relax. Her insides are all twisted up and her heart stutters occasionally with worry.

She keeps thinking back to Paige and if she's sleeping okay, thinking circles around what she's going to feed her. She feels restless and keeps glancing at the windows to see if she can spot the silhouette of angels before they arrive. It feels almost sinful to relax now that she's in bed. She can't stand the thought of something else happening on her watch.

It must be the shorts. The sheets feel too weird against her bare skin. She hasn't felt this vulnerable in a while.

(A thought slips out from the box in her head and whispers that it might be an acute awareness of the man who sleeps down the hall, who's newly regained presence in her life seems to have settled under her skin like a low fire. She promptly collects that thought and shoves it back where it belongs.)

She chucks the sheets off. She's sweating now.

It's like a hole has been poked, though, in the box in her head. She tried so hard not to think about him but now she just aches. She aches so much that it fills her throat and she struggles to blink back tears. She doesn't know where all of this is coming from but she feels it tear through her body like a storm, swelling and pushing against her like the sea they escaped is inside of her. She won't cry, she tells herself, she won't lie here and feel sorry for herself.

Somewhere, she understands his distance. It's the part of her that makes her walk away first. The part that remembers his people decimated her world, kidnapped and mutilated her sister and continue to create new horrors in the name of a fake apocalypse—and won't let her forget it. The destruction of her world is a tragedy of their making, and he belongs to them as intimately as she does to the family who strung up little girls.

Somehow, that exists separately from her want for the man who always protects her even when she doesn't know it. He seems to have developed a hypersensitivity to her feelings just like his hearing or his eyesight. She craves his embrace, like the night of her nightmare. She craves his shitty jokes, like when she left the wheelchair behind. She craves the promise of safety he brings, whether it be in the form of his arms or a pig farm.

His people might have burned her world down, but he's the only one who's ever been able to help her put out the fires in her mind.

And she knows, that he wants, too. Despite all his mixed signals, she's seen enough to know he cares for her the same that she does for him. And when he's looking at her like she's the best thing he's ever seen, she forgets why she can't have him.

But she always remembers. It always comes back to her like the demons that never leave her mother.

She swears and gets out of bed. She might as well get some water. She helplessly hopes that the activity and drink will help her cool down.

So of course, when she opens the door, she nearly trips over Raffe.

"What the hell are you doing outside my door? Why aren't you asleep?" She crouches down next to him and narrows her eyes at him. He may be an angel but even angels get tired.

He tilts his head and looks at her, unimpressed, "I'm keeping watch." If was a stranger on the street, she might've missed the tension in his shoulders, or the steel in his jaw. To an untrained eye, he seems like he's lounging against her door, lazy and pliant, but she knows better now. She can see the way his muscles are wired to fight, and how his eyes are searching for demons that aren't there. He's ready for a fight but what he's fighting isn't going to break down a door.

She levels him an equally unimpressed stare, "At my door? Because when the angels come they'll definitely come through this door and not-I don't know-the back door or a window or any of the outward facing entries?"

He looks down the hall, "Not all dangerous things come from outside."

It's like ice shoots through her veins but she tries not to wince because it's not like she's forgotten.

(She wishes she had the ability to forget but if she did, she wouldn't be sitting here right now. She'd probably still be back in the valley, helping her mother with her cart, the wheelchair long abandoned.)

"She won't hurt me," She tries to soothe him, but honestly, she's not sure if she's even convincing herself.

He turns to look at her and it sends a jolt down her entire spine, "Beliel thought the same thing." His eyes are churning and desperate. She figures it she wasn't there, this is what he would've looked like if he had fallen into the sea alone. Maybe he feels as if he's there right now.

She melts, leans forward and takes his face in her hands. He melts into the touch immediately and she caresses his face softly. This impossible boy. She wishes she could prove to him that she wouldn't fall subject to any of the horrors he's seen, not while she still has people to care for.

"She would never hurt me. I'm going to be okay." She pours as much conviction as she can into her words. His eyes bore into hers but she doesn't flinch, but instead lets her eyes tell him that he's hers now, too. She won't let that heartbroken look pass over his face again, not over her. She won't become another Daughter of Man he failed to protect, another piece of his heart that he let down.

He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against hers.

"I can't lose you, too."

His confession slips out quietly, but it's the loudest thing she's ever heard him say.

She moves her hands back to tangle with the hairs at the nape of his neck, twisting them gently between her fingers as she brings him an infinitesimally closer, as if every inch they are apart is a galaxy she has to cross to get to him, and promises, "You won't."

He breaks and grabs at her hips, pulling her into his lap, flush against him as he buries his face into her neck. She is immediately lit on fire at every point their bodies touch but she gladly welcome to heat. She tangles her hands fully into his hair and scratches his scalp gently, holding him.

"Come to bed with me," she whispers. She can physically feel the blush blooming like a wildfire across her face at her bold statement, but she just wants him close. She doesn't want him away from her.

Because his embrace was a universe for just the two of them, and she needed to get lost tonight.

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**A/N:** let me know what you guys think! i tend to wax poetic.


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